The FSP comes
from a major split from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Peoples’
Liberation Front, JVP), a group which led two bloodily repressed
insurrections in 1971 and 1987. Socialist Alliance's Peter Boyle interviewed Lionel Bopage,
a former general secretary of the JVP (1979-1984) who left the party
because of the JVP's opposition to the Tamil minority’s right to national
self-determination.

* * *

As a former general secretary of the JVP you are familiar
with the type of repression being used by the Sri Lankan state against
leftists, Tamil nationalists and other dissidents, but are you surprised
at the continuing operation of secret death and torture squads after
the total suppression of all armed oppositions?

No. I am not surprised at the continuing operation of death and
torture squads by the state. Several major factors have contributed to
this situation.

It is less well known that death and torture squads were originally
formed during the 1988-89 period, when about 60,000 people were said to
have been killed. Death and torture squads continued to operate during
the war against the Tamil militancy. These squads are currently being
used to suppress any active political opposition to the state.
Opposition and human rights organisations allege that during the past
six months at least 56 political activists and journalists have been
abducted by armed men mainly in white vans; 29 of them occurred during
February and March 2012. It is an open secret that these squads operate
hand in glove with the government security forces. In addition, a huge
military machine is being maintained and expanded. One cannot challenge
the selective and discriminatory application of law according to the
regime’s whims and fancies.

The main challenge facing sovereignty of developing countries such as
Sri Lanka is neoliberalism. Neoliberal forces are waging a ruthless
war on resource-rich countries the world under the pretext of combating
terrorism and promoting democracy and human rights. In this environment,
the Sri Lankan government received the full political, economic and
military backing of almost the entire world. Apparently, the United
States (which recently sponsored the UNHRC resolution) and India (which
voted for the US resolution) provided their political and military
backing on the understanding that at the end of the war, structural
reforms will be made for addressing the political roots of the conflict.

The economic growth rate has declined. The Gini coefficient
indicates that income disparities have grown significantly in the urban
and estate sector and income has remained relatively static in the
rural sector. The increase in consumption and service provision
distribution is skewed in favour of the affluent in the land, in
particular, geographically towards the western province. The burden of
the current economic crisis is being placed on the shoulders of working
people with public services being gradually cut down through
privatisation policies following demands of the International Monetary Fund to reduce the budget
deficit.

Recently, to avert the balance of payments crisis in Sri
Lanka, the IMF released a loan instalment of about US$0.5 billion (as
part of its $2.6 billion standby loan). As a result of the loan, there
has been an 18% cap on credit growth, electricity and petroleum price
hikes, devaluation of the rupee and a pledge to cut this year’s budget
deficit to 6.2% of GDP. In addition to the recent tax increases made on
alcohol, cigarettes and all imported vehicles, social services and jobs
are expected to be axed, and fuel prices are to be raised once again.

The war [against the Tamils] has created additional disadvantages in the region of the
North and East in terms of economic infrastructure, livelihood, health
and education. The state’s cultural policies towards non-Sinhala people
are designed and implemented to build the majoritarian support for
discrimination and exclusion of non-Sinhala people so that the attention
of the working people can be diverted from the significant
socio-economic issues that prevail at the time.

It is in the best interests of the ruling elites for Lankan society
to remain fragmented so that no united effort on the people’s part will
threaten their power, control, interests and privileges of the regime.
When a crisis looms, as our own historical experiences indicate, such
layers and individuals will do everything at whatever cost to safeguard
their regime.

Therefore, the Sri Lanka regime needs to have a public enemy both
locally and internationally to divert the attention of the working
people. The syndrome of a "new public enemy" that needs suppressing
through a new insurgency seems to have been created soon after the
termination of armed conflict in May 2009. In 2010, the state, its
intelligence services and the government declared that they were aware
of another insurgency to be launched soon using university students.
This declaration was made in an environment of a crackdown targeting the
university students across the country, aimed at suppressing opposition
to its planned measures for privatisation of education.

It will be interesting to compare the repression the state launched
in the 1988-89 period, which developed into a massive spiral of violence
leading to the insurgency, killing about 60,000 people. Incidentally,
several political and military personalities, who had been involved in
serious human rights abuses such as disappearances, death and
destruction on their political opponents at the time, continue to hold
responsible positions under the current status quo.

It is in this light that one can understand the process of autocratic
militarisation of all sectors of the island, heavy-handed measures used
against the working people and the rural poor, and the dogmatically
chauvinist ideological campaign carried out against the non-Sinhala
people. So any protest against the government would become unpatriotic
and traitorous based on the claim that there is a so-called western
conspiracy against Sri Lanka.

So, the continuing operation of secret death and torture squads after
the total suppression of the progressive forces in the country will
continue.

What do you think brought about the release of Sri
Lankan-born Australian citizen Premakumar Gunaratnam and his comrade
from the newly formed Frontline Socialist Party? What is the fate of the
two still in detention?

As far as I know, two out of the four persons of the newly formed FSP
abducted are still in detention. FSP full-time political activists,
Lalith Weeraraj and Kugan Muruganandan, were abducted on December 9,
2011. Despite the Sri Lankan state denying having anything to do with
their abductions, certain news reports allege that they are being held
and tortured on the 6th floor of the Police Welfare Building, located
opposite the Manning Market in Colombo. This abduction, torture and
disappearance phenomenon is allegedly implemented under the supervision
of a certain deputy inspector general (DIG) of police in-charge of
Colombo. It is also alleged that this torture chamber is being managed
by a police inspector loyal to this DIG, who enjoys special privileges
under the current defence establishment.

As usual, the state and the government immediately denied any role in
the abductions of Premakumar Gunaratnam and Dimithu Attygalle. The inspector general of police claimed that the police had deployed several
teams to investigate. The foreign minister issued a statement after
Gunaratnam’s release, saying the disappearances had occurred with the
deliberate intention of causing embarrassment to the government and it
was grossly unfair to point the finger at the state.

The debut of the new party, the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) was to be held on April 9, two days after the abduction of Gunaratnam and Attygalle.

This new party emerged out of the old JVP and it seems to have wanted
to make Gunaratnam, its leader. The state was aware of his involvement
with the group and wanted to stop this new group from coming out. Last
December, when his wife was visiting Sri Lanka, she had been followed by
the state agents, and when she was leaving Sri Lanka, she was arrested,
detained and questioned at the airport about her husband. Therefore,
there is nothing surprising that he had to work clandestinely and under
different names. Rohana Wijeweera, Podi Athula and Wimal Weerawansa are
such well-known acquired names, while, internationally, Ho Chi Min,
Lenin, Mao are also well-known acquired names.

Apparently, Gunaratnam fled to Australia in the 1990s and became an
Australian citizen. It seems that he changed his name and returned to
Sri Lanka in late 2011 to participate in FSP activities. Having heard of
the abduction of their son, his parents requested the Australian High
Commission to intervene. According to Gunaratnam, following the
intervention by the Australian government, his abductors dumped him near
a Colombo police station and told him to go there and surrender. The
police then informed the Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka, which
supervised Gunaratnam’s deportation.

Gunaratnam and Attygale seem to have been detained at separate covert
locations in Kiribathgoda (close to Colombo), they have been brought
together for questioning and collaborating each of their responses by
the abductors. Hence Gunaratnam knew that Attygale was held by the same
agents that abducted him.

The questioning was about if the FSP had any
links with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) remnants, and if
the FSP was readying itself for an armed struggle. As such, to deport
Gunaratnam and to make Attygalle disappear would have been a political
and diplomatic risk that the Sri Lankan state wanted to avoid at any
cost, in particular, after the recent UN Human Rights Council
Resolution. This may explain the release of Attygale, after deporting
Gunaratnam.

In my opinion, the first factor that led to their release was the
urgent international publicity that the abduction of Premakumar
Gunaratnam and Dimuthu Attygalle received. Particularly, in the current
international environment Sri Lankan state has encountered, the
Australian High Commission’s intervention would have placed the Sri
Lanka state in an awkward position. Thus, the course of action taken by
the Sri Lankan state would have been to avoid a diplomatic
embarrassment.

The second factor is that there was information leaked regarding
where Gunaratnam had been detained taken after kidnapping. Such
information would have come from certain individuals in the ranks, who
either would have really been concerned of what the regime is doing in
terms of kidnapping people violating their rights to freely engage in
conducting their political activities democratically, or would have been
disgruntled by the undemocratic behaviours of politicians and the top
brass of the security forces.

The exact nature of what happened leading to their release is not
clear. I believe it will take some time and those reasons will become
known in due course.

For a certain time, after you left the JVP, that party supported the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil
independence movement but now it is seen as an opposition party. Why is
this? And what are the politics of the FSP split from the JVP?

Though I can express my opinion regarding this situation, the best
person to respond to this question would be Premkumar Gunaratnam
himself.

In fairness to the newly emerging FSP, I need to say that at its
first congress, it issued a new policy declaration and a
self-criticism of the JVP past, which is not yet available here in
Australia, so it is too early to make a critical assessment of its
current political positions.

Gunaratnam’s visit to Sri Lanka has been to work with his former
colleagues in the JVP who thought that the party’s strategic political
approach needed a complete overhaul: mainly, regarding the use of
violence as a means of social change, to actively engage in changing the
authoritarian rule in Sri Lanka through democratic means, and changing
its previous chauvinistic approach towards the national question.

I would characterise the JVP as a semi-proletarian movement of the
rural youth, landless peasants, the unemployed and other oppressed
sections of the Sri Lankan society. The main aim of the JVP was
achieving social justice for the oppressed and equitable resource and
income distributions. However, petty-bourgeois thinking, vacillation and
opportunism have prevailed in its ideological positions.

In its history, the JVP has gone through several different policy
positions regarding the national question. Between 1971 and 1983, the
JVP recognised, in principle, the Leninist position on right of nations
to self-determination. However, it continuously rejected agitating for
the rights of non-Sinhala people. In the face of discrimination and
repression against the Tamil people, the JVP central committee remained
deadly silent. At the beginning of 1983 there was no difference between
what the JVP was advocating and what an orthodox parliamentary party
would have been advocating on the national question.

In July 1983 by concocting a conspiracy, the UNP government
proscribed the JVP and drove it underground. In 1985, the JVP decided to
build an underground organisation and to use the national question in
an opportunistic manner to gain political power. Instead of relying on
people power, in late 1985, the JVP had based their hopes on arms. 1986 saw
a major shift in the JVP’s approach towards the national question. The
JVP terror campaign in earnest appeared to have begun in 1987, with the
Deshapremi Janatha Vyaparaya's (DJV, Patriotic Peoples’ Movement)
decision to declare curfew and kill civilians who do not abide by its
orders. The government sponsored July 1983 pogrom against the Tamils had
exacerbated the Tamil militancy in the north-east which by then has
become a full scale civil war. In mid-1987 India airdropped supplies
over the north east to prevent a full-scale invasion of the Jaffna
Peninsula by the Sri Lankan state.

Since the 1990s, the JVP was traversing the right-wing route. It made
a major shift towards class collaboration with the bourgeois leadership
of the PA, thus taking a comparable route traversed by the old left in
the 1960s. The JVP agitation was based on the claim that Sri Lanka’s,
national independence and sovereignty were in grave danger. They opposed
negotiations with the LTTE unless they drop the demand for separation
and disarmed, which was politically equivalent to a complete surrender.

Worst was their statement that there has been no ethnic problem in
Sri Lanka. With regard to the national question they joined hands with
Sinhala chauvinist groups. Condemnation of terror by the JVP was
one-sided. While condemning the terror campaigns conducted by the LTTE,
they praised the terror campaigns conducted by the security forces as
patriotic.

The JVP became pawns in the hands of reactionary political forces of
the worst kind in the history of Sri Lanka. Sadly, many in the left have
helped and are still helping bourgeois ruling elites in diverse ways to
implement their neoliberal agenda. No wonder the left is in crisis in
Sri Lanka.

It is in this light that we need to critically look at what the
emerging FSP is attempting to do. There are lot of antagonisms regarding
what [its members] have done in the past. However, we of the left need to
welcome and encourage any positive change in their political direction,
even if we do not agree with their political agenda and line of action
in their entirety. It is only through the united action of those in the
left in collaboration with those who value democratic and human rights
and rule of law, that Sri Lanka will be able to come out from its
current precarious situation.

[The Lionel Bopage Story: Rebellion, repression and the struggle for justice in Sri Lanka by Michael Cooke
(Agahas Publishers 2011), 566 pp, A$25.00 is available from Resistance Books. A review of this book by Ben Courtice can be read here. A review by Dr V. Suryanarayan can be read here.